As a conventional art in the technical field, an optical disc recording apparatus shown in Patent Document 1 is known. An object of the optical disc recording apparatus shown in Patent Document 1 is to ensure smooth continuous reproduction when video and audio data which has been recorded on an information recording medium is being reproduced.
In order to achieve this object, in the optical disc recording apparatus shown in Patent Document 1, a recording area of the information recording medium is divided into a plurality of small areas (continuous recording areas), and information is recorded on and read out from on a basis of the divided continuous recording areas.
FIG. 11 is a flow chart showing a process for reserving continuous recording areas which is performed by the optical disc recording apparatus shown in Patent Document 1. First, unused areas on the optical disc are searched for (S701), and a free space list indicating unused areas is produced based on the search result (S702). An unused area is picked out from the produced free space list, and a minimum size of a continuous recording area for this unused area is determined (S703). If the unused area is larger than the minimum size, the unused area is reserved as one of the continuous recording areas and an order of recording on the reserved continuous recording areas is decided (S704). The order of recording is decided to be one with which the reserved continuous recording areas are used in an order from an inner peripheral side to the outer peripheral so that a head seeking operation for recording is reduced to the lowest level, for example.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-13728
However, the optical disc recording apparatus shown in Patent Document 1 has a problem that multiple types of data streams cannot be recorded at the same time on a new information recording medium which has never been used or an information recording medium which has no defect area at all, i.e., an information recording medium which has only one unused area because only one continuous recording area is reserved on such a recording medium.